‘We escaped the Taliban, but it’s impossible to begin a new life in the UK’
As the Taliban encroached on Kabul, Raakin – a British interpreter of five years – waited in filth by the airport gates with his wife and six-week old daughter.
“I was nervous. The British Forces would come to the door and call names – they were focusing on people with British passports and my name wasn’t called,” Raakin said. He was one of 18,000 eligible for relocation to the UK last year, after coalition forces withdrew from its 20-year intervention in Afghanistan and the government collapsed. “My daughter was very young, a month and a half. It was dirty, full of dust and flies.”
On his fourth and final attempt, the Taliban swarmed the airport armed with assault rifles. “It was too late for us,” he said. Minutes after leaving, a suicide bomb killed more than 180 people. Raakin and his family went into hiding.
“I was sad and thinking I was betrayed. I took a bullet for these people and they left me behind,” he told the Telegraph. He had been shot for being the “ears and tongues” of British soldiers – who he said wouldn’t leave their base without an interpreter – while on patrol near Camp Bastion. “I would see… dogs and cats being evacuated through a special operation. That would make me sad.”
After weeks living underground, Raakin, his wife and daughter crossed into Pakistan. They slept at the border, before being flown to the UK.
Raakin feels safe in Britain, and is grateful for his rescue, but his life here remains on standby.
His family shares one room in a hotel in Yorkshire. Without an address, he cannot apply for a driving licence, and his visitors must be approved by the hotel manager. There’s no clear route for his parents and siblings to join him in the UK – a right under the 1951 Refugee Convention – despite his work putting them in danger from the Taliban.
